The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1887-04-14
CAPE GOD WOMEN.
Beautiful Creatures at Sixteen and Old
and Haggard at Thirty.


Beautiful Creatures at Sixteen and Old
and Haggard at Thirty.
eff there was ever blighted race OF
women" said a gentleman of this city,
recently returned from visit to Cape
Cod, sit exists in the peninsular vii
lagos of Massachusetts,, which depend
on the fisheries for the support of their
inhabitants. Nowhere else in all New
England will one ever see so high an
average of female beauty, especially in
symmetry of form and freshness of
complexion; but it will not take one
long to discover that this girlish beauty
and freshness, while unusual and unex-
pected, is also in it's duration very brief.
The change produced in these girls by
the lapse of a few years is painful to
observe. No matronly graces are to
be seen among them after their girl
hood days are past. That charm
ing middle stage of maturing woman
hood, between the freshness and
buoyancy of the girl of twenty and the
woman of thirty-five or forty, is en-
tirely absent. The heightened color Of
the cheek is gone. The eyes are
sunken, and wear a constant look Of
sadness and anxiety. Gray hair in
heads over which a score and half Of
years have scarcely passed, and deep
lines in faces which should show no
trace of age for years to come, are
rather the rule than the exception.
These women, besides suffering from
all the inevitable sorrows which fall to
woman's lot. no matter in what station
she may be placed, have an added in
tense and perpetual sorrow all their
own. Theirs is life of continual sus-
pense and anxiety, which is almost cer-
tain in time to be embittered by an over
whelming grief.
The most obtuse observer need not
ask the cause of this lack of complete
matrorly beauty among these women,
whose budding days opened with the
greatest promise of a superb physical
womanhood. The cause suggests itse,l
at once to one who sees the congrega-
tions of women ON the beaches and in
the quiet streets of the villages. He will
notice occasionally feeble old man
among them, generally supported on the
arm of some female companion, who,
most likely, carries on her other arm a
chubby-faced child of lusty lungs. But
in these groups, or anywhere around the
village, the observer will look in vain
for the presence of males between the
tottering years of these relics of the
past. and the prattling days of baby.
hood. 1t is the fishing season, and
there are no men or boys on shore
Their smacks are tossing on the treacher
Gus waters of the fishing banks, and
their return, if they return at all, is as
uncertain as the weather, which forms
the one great subject of conjecture and
apprehension among the villagers
Husbands, sons, fathers, brothers ant
sweethearts are somewhere out on the
bosom of the sea, probably homeware
bound, perhaps steering for still more
distant waters, perhaps struggling fol
life among the waves. Fair weather
keeps hope warm in many an anxiou:
woman's heart; the bowling northeastel
fills it with doubt and despair. Con
stantly watching by day, waking in The
| night to listen to sounds from the sea
whether they may be the roaring o.
the dreaded tempest or merely the moar
of the surf on the beach, is it any wonder
that the torture of mind and heart and
the strain of nerve and vital force that
must follow this perpetual suspense and
longing destroy the fountains of youth
and beauty in these patient, suffering
women, and place upon them the mark
of age while they are yet young?
.'Yet the girls grow up with but on,
thought of what their future lot will be
with but one object in view upon which
their visions of happiness are based
Go among any group of these brigh
girls, in any of the villages of the elias
l am speaking of, and you will find tina
nine out of ten of them look forward tt
union with some one who will spend
his life fishing in the summer and coast
ing in the winter. The idea that Their
might be any other future than the ont
which is to come to them as fishermen:
wives, or that the life of a fisherman
wife is any thing different from tn
natural sequence of married life, never
seems to occur. IN Y Nail and E1
press.
I o.
l Useful Hints in BuiIdipp